


to trust love one more time

by Anonymous



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Gen, No Incest, everyone is mentioned but they don't really show up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-31
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-12-30 00:02:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18304190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: In the midst of her rampage through the Academy, Vanya remembers Five.





	to trust love one more time

There is a strange calmness settled around Vanya as she takes the elevator up from the basement, as she steps out and stalks down the hallway, her eyes electric-blue, her power shaking the Academy’s foundations. Control comes easily to her, now that her emotions no longer as explosive as they were before—they are replaced with a simmering anger and hatred that burns slowly yet somehow feels so cold.

 _They’re just like dad,_ says a whisper, in a voice that belonged to her so many years ago, this time unaccompanied by a reflection in a window. _They are driven to keep us down, isolated from the group._

_They fear us now._

And she thinks she could hate them for it. She hates them for leaving her in that room filled with nightmares. She hates them for not believing in her, for not listening; for turning their backs on her when she so desperately needed someone, anyone, to just tell her  _it’s gonna be okay._ She hates them for always treating her as though she never belonged, no matter how much she just wanted them to be a _family;_ and she hates that now that she has powers, now that she is one of them, they still do not accept her.

She hates them.

(But that's—a lie. She doesn't. Can't.  _God_ , it's painful how much she still loves them, still craves their love and acceptance, yet—)

Ben. Klaus.

_“To go on a mission, Vanya, you have to have a power.”_

(She does not belong.)

Diego.

_“Vanya! What do you want?”_

(She is not needed.)

Allison. Luther.

_“Just get out!”_

(She is not wanted.)

 _This place gives nothing but pain,_ the voice whispers. _Destroy it._ And Vanya almost allows herself to give in, her power shaking the Academy, plaster falling around her like snow, but—

there is—   

someone—

missing.

 _Five_.

 _He left us_ , the voice hisses. _Don’t you remember? He disappeared and left us alone in this prison they call a home._

Vanya remembers. She remembers the pain, the sadness that choked her as it rose in her throat slowly with every day that Five didn’t reappear. Remembers the betrayal that stayed with her, constant, for seventeen years. She wants to hate him, too, for taking away the only thing in the Academy that made it feel like a home, but—

 _I missed him,_ another voice says, small and sad. _And I_ _missed him so much more with every day that passed._

The building’s shaking slows.

 _We made sandwiches for him every day,_ the first voice says, quietly. _We left the lights on so he could find us when he came back._

_But he never did._

The shaking intensifies.

 _But he's back, now. And he tried,_ the other voice insists, and it sounds like Vanya’s as she is now. _He tried everything he could._

_(“You think I didn’t try everything to get back to my family?”)_

The shaking slows again. Stops.

 _He tried,_ the voices say, and they merge into one. _He tried._

 _I was the only one he trusted to tell everything to,_ Vanya thinks. Remembers.

_(“I’ve decided you’re the only one I can trust.”)_

She is consumed, suddenly, by the need to see him once more. To talk to him. To see, once and for all, if she really is the outcast, if there is no one that will accept her for who she is, if there is no one that will wholly love her.

She climbs up the stairs and walks until she reaches the room that was Five’s and pushes the door gently, letting it swing open slowly.

What she sees is not rejection or anger or a distant indifference; what she sees is mild annoyance that fades into a warm and excited smile as her memory of Five puts down the book he is reading and gestures for her to enter before he all but jumps from his bed and takes the notebook lying on top of his desk.

The blue fades from her eyes.

 _“Vanya! Here, I need you to check over these equations—I think I’m almost ready for time travel, I can_ feel _it—”_

“Why me?” Vanya whispers, an echo of the same question she’d asked just days ago, when she’d found Five in her apartment.

 _“Because you’re ordinary,”_ he'd said, but it had sounded like a lie, like a thin, simple cover for the truth.

 _“Because you’re the only one who will listen,”_ he'd said next, quiet and entirely too vulnerable.

 _He trusted me_ , Vanya thinks, turning away from the room and making her way down the hallway with a gait that is almost slow and unsure, but no less purposeful than before.

(He loved her, has _always_ loved her, with all the unconditional love of a child to his siblings; he has never thought of her as anything lesser, as anything other than his sister.)

 _He gave me his trust, and I destroyed it_ , she thinks, and _—_ _I_ _don’t want to lose him again._

She’ll give him the last of her trust, in return for the trust he’d given her. Had always given to her.

It’s the least she can do.


End file.
